SAGHAND, Iran (AP) – Iran will begin extracting uranium from deep under its central desert in less than two years, an official told The Associated Press on Saturday during an unprecedented tour of the country’s uranium mine.

Iran maintains its nuclear ambitions are purely peaceful, despite U.S. charges it seeks nuclear weapons, and is pressing ahead with plans to control the whole nuclear fuel cycle from mining uranium ore to enriching uranium to be used in reactors.

Saturday’s tour of the Saghand mine, some 300 miles south of Tehran, was the first time Iran has allowed an international news agency to visit a site related to its highly ambitious program to develop the entire fuel cycle, from extracting uranium ore to enriching nuclear fuel. Iran wants to prove it has nothing hide, but serious questions have been raised about its nuclear program.

Iran’s critics argue that a country that controls the fuel cycle will inevitably be able to produce a nuclear bomb if or when it decides to do so.

The AP learned earlier this week that Iran told the U.N. International Atomic Energy Agency it was planning to process more than 40 tons of uranium into uranium hexafluoride gas. The gas – if enriched – would produce enough material for four or five nuclear warheads, according to experts. Such gas can also be enriched to make fuel for an electricity-producing reactor.

U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell said in response that Washington would urge the IAEA at its board meeting this month to refer Iran to the U.N. Security Council for possible sanctions.

The European Union was also concerned by the report of Iran’s processing plans, saying it could not accept the development of weapons grade uranium by Iran. The Iranians say they do not have the technology to make weapons-grade uranium, but experts say they could.

President Mohammad Khatami first announced in February 2003 that his country would mine uranium at Saghand, saying then that Iran was “determined to make use of advanced nuclear technology for peaceful purposes.” Few details of the activities at Saghand have emerged since then.

“We will be able to extract uranium ore in the first half of 2006 from Saghand mine. More than 77 percent of the work has been accomplished,” Ghasem Soleimani, the British-trained director of mining operations at the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, said at the mine Saturday.

He said the mine will feed Iran’s uranium enrichment plant at Natanz, in central Iran.

Iran also has a facility in Isfahan, another city in central Iran, that converts uranium powder, called yellowcake, into hexaflouride gas and is building uranium centrifuges, which are used to enrich uranium.

Saghand consists of an open pit with minimal reserves and a deep mine reached by two shafts. The total estimated reserves were 1.73 million tons of uranium ore, of “average” or medium quality of 553 parts per million. The mine has a capacity of 132,000 tons of uranium ore per year.

Soleimani said uranium could be extracted from the shafts as early as mid 2005 if the Iranian leadership wants things speeded up, but there was no suggestion that political leaders in Tehran want that to happen.

Soleimani said a few tons have already been extracted from the open pit for testing at a yellowcake production plant currently under construction in Ardakan, another city in central Iran.

The underground mine has two shafts, each more than 1,000 feet deep. A giant lifts takes engineers and workers at high speed down the main concrete shaft, which later splits off into several branches. The core of the mine covers an area of just under a square mile.

Mahdi Kabirizadeh, who is in charge of Saghand project, said 220 engineers and workers, all Iranian, were at work in his mine.

Chinese experts had been at work here until 2002 helping dig and providing some technology, he said.

“We are now totally independent,” he said.

IAEA inspectors visited Saghand in February, 1992 and found uranium drilling rigs staffed by fewer than two dozen workers. The nuclear watchdog has not visited since then.

Copy the Story Link